Wood stick, thin, then lead within

I've been getting bored with pencilling on the computer (no problem with its efficacy, just sick of sitting by a screen all day) so I've been trying to get back in touch with paper. As detailed previously, I sketch all the time, but I get a bit of stage fright when I have to draw "properly", I tend to tighten up too much and draw stiffly.

As I am planning to take a break from Bad Machinery between chapters on an as-yet-undecided project, hopefully with some room to experiment outside the 100-page youngling webcomic idiom, I thought I might try some old-school pencils. This plan may wither on the vine like so many before it but I will do some loosening up exercises over the next few weeks, just spend some time with my feelings on the matter. Here are a couple of practice pages, one is a redrawing of an old page, the second is some character design work. They're just for fun, neither is anything like perfect, they are submitted without further exposition.